Joe R. Blakely
Author of
About the Author
Even though he was born in California and earned a degree in history
from San Diego State College, Joe Blakely has lived most of his life in
Eugene, Oregon, where his various careers have included selling and appraising
real estate, repairing and refinishing furniture, and working with the Office
of Public Safety at the University of Oregon before his retirement in 1999.
But it was a chance encounter that made him an author, starting with his
first book, The Bellfountain Giant Killers.
It began while he was researching and photographing the historic Hull-Oakes
Lumber Mill south of Corvallis.
"Every time I drove to that lumber mill," he says, "I
would pass the Bellfountain school. Then one day I read Bob Welch's 'Little
Known Facts about Oregon' column in the Eugene Register-Guard, and one of
those facts described tiny Bellfountain High School's 1937 state champion
basketball team known as the Giant Killers."
His interest piqued, Joe decided to write about the team. He soon discovered,
however, that the story involved much more than just basketball. "My
research uncovered a period of time almost pristine in its gentle beauty,"
he says. "This was a time when basketball was played with finesse and
when sportsmanship was praised and admired. It was also a time when the
smallest school in Oregon could challenge the largest. Some of the people
involved in this story are among the humblest yet most inspirational people
I have ever met."
Blakely also says that in researching his second book, The
Tall Firs, he found a basketball story every bit as passionate as that
of The Bellfountain Giant Killers, though it was a story that had never
been told.
"There came to the University of Oregon in the 1930s," he says,
"a pensive, detailed, progressive coach in Howard Hobson, and five
basketball players who blended together so smoothly on the court that few
college teams could stop them. Together they brought basketball to a new
level of popularity that reached its zenith when they became the first NCAA
basketball champions.
In a departure from sports history, Blakely's third book, Lifting
Oregon Out of the Mud: Building the Oregon Coast Highway, is an account
of the vision and labor responsible for building one of the West's most
remarkable roads. For Blakely, the story began with a hike.
"While camping a few miles south of Port Orford on the southern
Oregon coast, I decided to hike a trail that went up Humbug Mountain,"
Blakely says. "After climbing about ten minutes I landed on an old
road. Thick moss was corroding the edges; leaves, debris, and huge cracks
told of a different age."
The age he had come upon was the 1920s, when the Oregon State Legislature
finally approved funding for a highway along the coast, and what he had
discovered was a remnant of that road, first called the Roosevelt Highway
and later Highway 101.
"I decided to investigate," Blakely says. "What I learned
was that this was not just any ordinary highway -- it was built over one
of the most rugged routes in the United States, included five bridges that
are still coastal landmarks, and helped coastal inhabitants survive the
Great Depression."
The Bellfountain Giant Killers
The Story of a Small Oregon High School and its Miraculous
Championship Season
They seemed to come from nowhere and to do the impossible, these young
men who appeared to be anything but extraordinary until they stepped onto
the basketball court -- but then magic happened.
Hailing from a Willamette Valley mill town described as "a wide
spot in the road" and from a school that was among the smallest in
the state, these eight remarkable athletes and their two special coaches
spent the basketball season of 1937 defeating the best teams from the biggest
schools in Oregon. And when the season had ended, the Bellfountain Giant
Killers had created a new chapter in Northwest sports history.
"This is a fine book. It brings back memories of the way it was
back then." Harry Wallace, starting guard, 1937 Bellfountain Giant
Killers
ISBN 1-930111-24-X, 66 pages, 7x8.5 inches, trade paper, maps, photographs,
appendix. $10.00 cover price. |
"Joe Blakely's book passionately preserves one of those David-vs.-Goliath
sports stories that must be remembered, not only for its historic significance
but for what it says to all of us who face life's giants." Bob Welch,
The Register Guard
"Anyone who believes that truth is
stranger than fiction will enjoy the story of the Bellfountain Giant Killers,
Joe Blakely's epic tale of courage, discipline, and caring that led to one
of the greatest upsets in Oregon sports history." Jeff Petersen, The
Observer |
The Tall Firs
The Story of the University of Oregon & The First NCAA
Basketball Championship
Sportswriters nicknamed them the Tall Firs, and their coach called them
the team of a lifetime -- but to basketball fans around the Northwest they
were the University of Oregon Ducks, and in 1939 they became part of America's
sports history by becoming the first NCAA basketball champions. Now "The
Tall Firs" tells the story of this remarkable team.
"There came to the University of Oregon in the 1930s," says
author Joe Blakely, "a pensive, detailed, progressive coach in Howard
Hobson, and five basketball players who blended together so smoothly on
the court that few college teams could stop them."
Those five players and their six teammates, all of whom came from the
Northwest, raised college basketball to a new level of popularity during
the dark days of the Great Depression.
ISBN 1-930111-440-1, 67 pages, 7x8.5 inches, trade paper, map, photographs,
appendix. $10.00 cover price.
"Blakely manages to sketch out a fact-driven yarn
with some interesting details and snapshots." James K. Yu, The Oregonian
"One
of the book's outstanding elements is the way it puts in relief the many
differences between then and now, both in basketball and in life outside
the sporting world." David R. Newman, Northwest Senior News |
"A must-read for any college basketball fan. It's the story of the
most famous group of 'Tall Firs' to ever come out of the Pacific Northwest.
The boys finally get their due in a great book by Joe Blakely." Gary
Henley, Daily Astorian
"I thought Joe Blakely had done
it all with his first book The Bellfountain Giant Killers. Now he's done
it again! Graduating from his tale about an amazing high school basketball
team to tell the equally riveting story about the University of Oregon basketball
team's march to the first-ever NCAA Championship in 1939 in his new volume
The Tall Firs." Pat Wilkins, West Side Newspaper |
Lifting Oregon Out of
the Mud
Building the Oregon Coast Highway
In 1913, a time of few roads and little pavement, the fledgling Oregon
Highway Commission had a single goal captured in a simple slogan -- "Get
Oregon Out of the Mud." Nowhere in the state was this more important
than along the coast, where a journey through this isolated land meant a
struggle with trees and brush, with tides and sand -- but mostly with mud.
"I don't see how there can be any Christians," said an early-twentieth-century
traveler, "where roads such as this exist!"
Yet in an era when the best of coast roads were built of wooden planks
or ran along the beach, and when an excursion by automobile could take a
dozen hours to travel the same number of miles, the problem was punching
a highway more than four hundred miles through some of the most rugged and
remote terrain on the continent. Now Lifting Oregon Out of the Mud
tells the story of how this historic achievement evolved when, starting
in the early 1920s and lasting into the Great Depression, determined leadership,
millions of dollars, and years of labor built the Oregon Coast Highway.
ISBN 1-930111-60-6, 65 pages, 8.5x11 inches, trade paper, numerous historical
photographs and maps. $15.00 cover price. |
"Blakely's book is a fascinating retrospective...tells a fascinating
story." Herald and News
"After reading Lifting Oregon Out of the Mud by Oregon author
Joe R. Blakely, driving the ocean-side route between California and Washington
won't be the same again..a dramatic, long-running story with a rich selection
of often dramatic contemporary photographs." Northwest Senior News
Lifting Oregon Out of the Mud is an engrossing narrative."
Westside Newspaper |
For autographed copies of
The Bellfountain Giant Killers
($10.00+$3.00 shipping)
The Tall Firs ($10.00+$3.00
shipping)
Lifting Oregon Out of the Mud
($15+$3.00 shipping)
or to contact Joe Blakely:
541-688-4643
PO Box 51561
Eugene, Oregon 97405
Author Joe Blakely at the Lane County Fair (Eugene, Oregon),
2006
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